Monthly Archives: June 2017

An International Call to Participate in the 1st Mosiah (August) Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March in Conjunction with the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

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On 1st Mosiah (August) 2017 thousands of people will take to the streets in Europe’s biggest Afrikan Reparations March ever, marching from Windrush Square in Brixton to the Houses of Parliament, London. However, in this the fourth year of the march taking place, we aim for there to be numerous simultaneous marches and/or other reparations actions in various countries in Afrika, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe.

The March is partnered with the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide’ Campaign and you can find out more about the SMWeCGEC here:https://stopthemaangamizi.com/

Maangamizi is a Kiswahili term for Afrikan hellacaust of chattel, colonial & neo-colonial enslavement

Why We March on 1st August

“Accepting our responsibility and obligation to our Ancestors for ensuring that the Afrikan identity is proclaimed, maintained and developed; and that Afrika is restored to its rightful place at the centre of world politics; call upon all people of Afrikan origin in the Caribbean, Afrika, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere to support the movement for reparations and join forces with a view to forming a strong united front capable of exposing, confronting and overcoming the psychological, economic and cultural harm inflicted upon us by peoples of European origin.”

Contrary to popular belief, however, the Slavery Abolition Act did not free the 800,000+ Afrikans who were then unjustly considered to be the legal property of Britain’s enslaving class. In fact, the act contained a provision for £20 million financial compensation to the enslavers, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their so-called “property”. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834, the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn and represented the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. It was the British Houses of Parliament, which in this unjust piece of legislation, upheld the notion that the Afrikan enslaved and their descendants were not human, but property and determined that the 800,000 people in the Caribbean were assessed as having a market value of £47 million.

The British Parliament also determined that enslaved Afrikans in the Caribbean would receive nothing. Instead they were forced, through the provision of this unjust law, to pay the remaining £27 million costs for their so-called emancipation by providing 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former ‘masters’, for a further four years after the passing of the Abolition Act. Clearly, the British state cemented this legalised form of injustice by forcing the enslaved to pay part of the costs for their legalised ‘manumission’. In practical terms, however, only enslaved persons below the age of six were manumitted as all enslaved persons over the age of six were redesignated as “apprentices”.

Girls On Sugar Plantation: Trinidad

So, in remembrance and continued resistance to this legalised form of injustice, which further entrenched the impoverishment of our foreparents in various parts of the British Empire, we the illustrious Sons and Daughters of Global Afrika have to mobilise ourselves in a united front and effort to engage in the galvanising of our people in a collective ‘show of strength’. The issue of securing justice by way of reparations for Afrikan slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism and their legacies requires developing a glocal Afrikan perspective and organising framework. We are calling on you to do join the March in demonstration of our principled operational unity on the cause of holistic reparations for Afrikans both at home and abroad.

Promoting the Reparatory Justice Change We Are Organising to Bring About

“Progressive social movements do not simply produce statisticsand narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones do what greatpoetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors and, more importantly, enable us to imagine a newsociety. We must remember that the conditions and the very existence of social movements enable participants to imagine something different, to realize that things need not always be this way.”

For this year’s Reparations March we will be building on the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee’s (AEDRMC) motto of ‘Education is Part of the Preparation for Reparations’ as part of the mobilisation and consciousness raising of our people towards playing their part in efforts to enforce the stopping of the Maangamizi, in this neo-colonial phase, in the process of effecting and securing holistic and trasnformative reparatory justice. We are doing so by encouraging those attending the March to promote, in a concrete, visual and informative/educational way, the reparatory justice organising work that they are engaged in year-round. What this means is that we encourage you to represent, profile and display the reparations solutions that you advocate and are involved in mobilising and organising to bring about all year-round.

Here are a few examples of how you can prepare yourself, families, friends, groups, organisations and communities for effectively participating in the March:

(1) Come with placards which visually portray and promote:

images of Afrikan heroes, sheroes, Maangamizi Resistors and Martyrs that have made a contribution to Afrikan people’s struggles for freedom from the Maangamizi, both in the past and in the present;

slogans and quotations which speak to the various campaigns and struggles Afrikan people worldwide have been waging for reparatory justice, both in the past and in the present;

the reparatory justice programmes and initiatives you, your family, organisation or campaigning group are involved in. Of particular reparatory justice interest is work that is being planned and done with reference to Afrikan Community Self-Repairs needs and aspirations such as work in education, health, employment, parenting and social care, (particularly for children, the elderly and the differently-abled), sports, recreation, social enterprise and cooperative economic development.

Afrikan Community Self-Repairs are the self-determined efforts that need to be made in building our own power, in such a way, that Afrikan heritage communities are able to identify and enhance ongoing work towards stopping the contemporary manifestations of the Maangamizi, which are putting the individuals, families and other social groups that make up our communities into a state of disrepair; as well as reasoning and consciously carrying out the alternative solutions for glocally rebuilding our power base as communities, in such a way that that they are eventually transformed, in accordance with the principles and programmatic demands of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.

So, for example:

You may be running a care home for children, differently-abled or elderly people, if so, you could bring along a placard that not only profiles your bespoke service, but also demands appropriate resources for the Afrikan culturally competent care of those you are serving;

Students are encouraged to come on the March with placards addressing the Afriphobic and anti-Black racism they suffer in their institutions and the activities they are carrying out to resist their unjust situation and effect institutional change;

Those from faith communities who attend churches, mosques, temples and other religious/spiritual organisations are also encouraged to come on the March with placards displaying messages relevant to their liberation theology work, in their respective places of worship and fellowship, which are relevant to reparatory justice.

(2) Participate in the Mwakalenkonso (Revered Ancestors) Bloc by coming to the March appropriately dressed as or otherwise symbolically representing a heroic ancestor from your own family line or a community Ancestor who has in some way been involved in resistance to the Maangamizi or advocating some form of reparatory justice. We must always remember that our people’s claims and right to reparations are based on the principle of intergenerational justice and therefore have transgenerational, transnational and intercultural dimensions. By appearing on the March visually representing or otherwise imaging revered Ancestors, one will be doing so in remembrance, honour and recognition of the interconnectedness of our Ancestor’s foundational struggles to resist the Maangamizi with our own. This will not detract from the serious nature of the protest that we will be undertaking, however does introduce a more creative element to protest actions that are typical of marches and other forms of street action. Claims to reparations have to move beyond merely calling on the name of our Ancestors as justification for the genesis of our entitlements to redress today to truly recognising the personhood, worldviews and visions of reparatory justice of the Afrikans that were enslaved in various parts of the world. In addition, we have a duty to past generations and future generations to ensure that our reparatory justice objectives, programmes and actions bring about the holistic and transformatory redress; empowerment, repair and restoration of our people’s sovereignty. Being visually reminded of our Ancestors activism and struggles to emancipate us compels us to uphold the reparations ethics and standards of the past generations of our clan, family, or community freedom-fighters.

Here are a few examples of community Ancestors, (can you guess who they are):

(3) Participate in the Ujaama (Global Afrikan Family) Bloc by visually displaying and portraying national and country flags, national dress, national heroes and sheroes, Martyrs etc. as well as organisational emblems, motifs and pictures of reparatory justice struggles of our peoples resisting the Maangamizi in various parts of the world including, Afrika, Abya Yala (so-called Americas,) and its sub-regions such as the Caribbean, Australasia, Oceania, Europe etc.

(4) Of course, we are also relying on you to assist in the general mobilisation towards getting people to come on the March, from all sectors within our communities. Each one invite and attend with many!

Ujaama – Gobal Afrikan Family Bloc
If you would like to participate internationally by amplifying the voices of Afrikan heritage reparatory justice communities of interest and their struggles to emancipate our people from the continuing Maangamizi worldwide, you can do so by participating in the Ujaama – Global Afrikan Family Bloc. If you would like to take part in the Ujaama Bloc please call or text Bro Kofi on 07751143043 or emailing stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com

Mwakalenkonso – Revered Ancestors Bloc
If you are in the UK and would like to participate in the Mwakalenkonso – Revered Ancestors Bloc please text or call Bro Simeon/Sis Nishika on 07751143043 or email stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com.

Take a look at this video to hear more about the importance of the March viz-a-viz wider reparations social movement-building.

In order to increase impact, we also encourage you to innovatively think for yourself and consult with the AEDRMC, as organisers of the March, on your own ways and ideas of adding to the creativity of expressing, on this March, the reparatory justice change you/we are mobilising and organising to bring about.

Help us to Sustain the March as the Street Column of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR)

Between the annual 1st August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Marches, you can contribute to building and sustaining the organisation of the following blocs:

These blocs continue to operate, mobilise and organise throughout the year as part of reparations social movement-building, locally, nationally and internationally at the core of which is the intergenerational Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement. A reparations social movement-building approach challenges reparations organisations, campaigning and/or special interest groups and the general Afrikan public heritage to critically assess how we have organised ourselves to achieve our short to medium term reparations goals. In particular, it enables ISMAR (reparations movement) participants to explore their political agendas, involvement of constituents and strategies for collective action underpinned by processes of individual, collective and organisational reflection.

By using a movement-building approach, constituencies of the ISMAR can increase the efficacy of the ISMAR by incorporating an analysis of power and learning from the successes and failures of previous and existing efforts to effect and secure reparatory justice. Admittedly, we are faced with the huge challenge of building the power, locally, nationally and internationally to bring about, compel and influence the reparations goals and outcomes we as Afrikans have set for ourselves. However, the multifaceted processes of mobilisation and organising that take place related to the March are part of this process of building community power to effect and secure the reparatory justice processes we set ourselves in the short, medium and long-term.

“Unless our struggle leads to the Pan–Afrikanist revolutionary, concientisation and mobilisation of the broad masses of Afrikan people throughout the Continent and the Diaspora to achieve first and foremost their definitive emancipation from the impeding vestiges of colonialism and the still enslaving bonds of present day neocolonialism, to smash the yoke of white racist supremacy and utterly destroy the mental and physical stranglehold of Eurocentrism upon Afrikans at home and abroad delinking Afrika [and Afrikans] from imperialism…we shall have no power to back our claim for restitution and to give us the necessary force of coercion to make the perpetrators of the heinous crimes against us to honour the obligations of even the best fashioned letter and spirit of international law.”

Kofi Mawuli Klu, ‘Charting an Afrikan Self-Determined Path of Legal Struggle for Reparations’, a draft paper presented to the 11th December 1993 Birmingham Working Conference of the African Reparations Movement, UK, (1993)

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The most transformative of movements for reparations have generally represented a form of ‘prefigurative politics’ which means movement participants organise as if they are already in the process of bringing about the Post-Afrikan Reparations World Order by taking steps to bring about the inter and intra-Afrikan community self-repairs required for us to become whole and guarantee community’s members collective security and prosperity. This speaks to the principle that reparations activists and reparations organisations should model in their present-day lives and work the new values, institutions and social relationships they advocate for on a broader scale, as part of their strategy for effecting and securing the reparatory justice social change sought. In other words, becoming and modelling the change we want to see in the world. This is generally taken to mean that we who are proponents of reparatory justice, have a moral duty have to strive to reflect the kind of society we are fighting for in our lifestyle, families, organisations, special interest groups, movements and communities etc.

If this bloc-building work is sustained between the marches, the annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March then becomes the culmination point of our year-round community self -repairs work, reparations campaigning and other forms of activism. In addition, the March is being a vehicle for publicly showcasing the strength of our organising, networks and capacity-building to strengthen and advance the ISMAR.

As part of the bloc-building, please remember that the costs of emancipating ourselves from the modern-day Maangamizi are not free. Reparations social-movement building needs resourcing, and this is a movement that is self-funded. Fundraising to build and sustain the March, as the street column of the ISMAR, must also go on all year round. You can support the work towards facilitating the March and its related campaigning aspects by donating to the ASR Fund (Afrikan Self-Repairs) of the AEDRMC. If you would like to donate to the costs of the Reparations March donate at: https://www.gofundme.com/ukmarch.

Alternatively, you can make a contribution to the ASR Fund as follows:

For further info about the rest of the blocs and how you can get involved contact the AEDRMC:
Tel: 07922035446/ 07597592889 Email: getinvolved@reparationsmarch.org
Instagram: The March UK
FB page: TheMarch August

“Fully persuaded that the damage sustained by the Afrikan peoples is not a ‘thing of the past’ but is painfully manifest in the damaged lives of contemporary Afrikans, from Harlem to Harare, in the damaged economies of the Black World from Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam.”

A declaration of the first Abuja Pan-Afrikan Conference on Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement, Colonisation and Neo-Colonisation, sponsored by the Organisation of African Unity and its Reparations Commission April 27-29, 1993, Abuja, Nigeria

You Can Still Participate If You are Outside of the UK

We invite you to also organise a solidarity march or event in your locality or country on the 1st August 2017. If you are not able to organise a march, we encourage you to organise some other type of solidarity reparations action, activity or event such as: a libation ceremony (as occurs annually in Accra, (Ghana), rally, reparations radiothon e.g.#Conversation Reparations (as occurs in the USA) or reparatory justice ‘occupations’ of specific places with connections to the Maangamizi, in the past or the present. For example, companies, university campuses or historic building sites.

Even if your community were not enslaved or colonised by the British Empire, you can still connect with what we are doing in the UK by highlighting and educating people about the British Establishment’s complicity in the Maangamizi as it affects and impacts on your personhood, family and/or community. Examples of such impacts may include, land grabs, extractive industries, environmental degradation, GMOs, tax-dodging and other forms of corporate looting, debt-bondage, various forms of externally reinforced reactionary violence such as US-AFRICOM presence proxy wars in addition to so-called ‘Black on Black’ violence in self-destructive subservience to the global system of white supremacist racism, including its gendered forms.

At minimum, please consider sending a solidarity statement to info@reparationsmarch.org. or stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com

“Afrika is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Afrikans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Afrika’s impoverishment.”

Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah

In West Afrika?, You Can Participate in the SANKOFAAPAE Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice International Libation Ceremony in Ghana

We as organisers of and participants in the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March, highly appreciate what is being in Ghana and encourage all those interested in the March living in Ghana or West Afrika to help build and strengthen this satellite process in Ghana and extend it into the countries in which you live, if you are not resident in Ghana. The SANKOFAAPAE Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice International Libation Ceremony (SANKOFAAPAE-PARJILC) is a strictly non-party political activity of various grassroots progressive forces of Pan-Afrikan civil society which are independently mobilizing for the ground-up popular education, reparatory justice civic conscientization and its relevant human, peoples’ and Mother Earth rights awareness raising among ordinary masses of peoples throughout the World to achieve our vision of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.

We recognise this SANKOFAAPAE as a unity promotional endeavour, of global dimensions, for connecting into the global Pan-Afrikan reparatory justice struggle, the efforts being made by various in Afrikan communities to assert their rights to self-determination and reconstruction of nationhood including overcoming the divisions imposed by the artificially created European borders and other manifestations of the Maangamizi that continue into the present to the detriment of their Afrikan personality, humanity and sovereignty.

Examples of such national self-determinist endeavours with reparatory justice bearings which seek to overcome the divisive colonial 1885 boundaries of the Congress of Berlin and counter the ensuing Euro-centric economic and geopolitical interests which have been inimical to the aspirations of Afrikans include, but are not restricted to:

The SANKOFAAPAE is also relevant to providing global visibility for such self-determination battles and the communities waging them in order to facilitate Pan-Afrikan internationalist solidarity for them, including enabling them to participate in efforts of rematriation*/voluntary repatriation as part of Pan-Afrikan reparatory justice. In so doing, Afrikans from the Diaspora can reintegrate into such communities and make their contributions to ensuring recognition, justice and sustainable development in accordance with the ‘Right to Afrika’which we are promoting as the most vital aspect of the UN ‘International Decade for People of African Descent’.

*The Indigenous concept of Rematriation refers to restoring a living material culture to its rightful place on Mother Earth; restoring a people to a spiritual way of life, in sacred relationship with their ancestral lands; and reclaiming ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge and resources.

If you are in Ghana/West Afrika and would like to participate in the Libation Ceremony contact Bro Mawuse on + (233) 203 790 105 or email Bro mawuse.yao@gmail.com

“Convinced that the pursuit of reparations by the Afrikan peoples in the continent and in the Diaspora will itself be a learning experience in self-discovery and in uniting experience politically and psychologically.”

A declaration of the first Abuja Pan-Afrikan Conference on Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement, Colonisation and Neo-Colonisation, sponsored by the Organisation of African Unity and its Reparations Commission April 27-29, 1993, Abuja, Nigeria

How You Can Support the ‘Stop The Maangamizi’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) in between the Marches

You can still sign the ‘Stop the Maangamizi’ Petition which gets handed in to the Office of the UK Prime Minister each year as a key feature of the annual Reparations March. The Petition is also available in several other European languages including French, Dutch and German.

If you are in the UK you can also lobby your local MP or elected official to take action on the key demands of the SMWeCGEC by utilising this postcard template.

You can take action on the SMWeCGEC in many other ways, see here for some suggestions.

Paraphrasing, our great Arikan Liberator Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who reminded us almost 100 years ago, “Up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will!”

Coordinator-General of the International Steering Committee, Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

Jendayi Serwah,
Co-Chair, AEDRMC, Co-Vice Chair SMWeCGEC

Prophet Kwaku, Co-Chair, AEDRMC

“It will be gross self-delusive wishful thinking to believe that those wielding the reins of White racist supremacy, are going to pay and serious heed to the Afrikan demand for Reparations, unless their hold on the machinery of global power is effectively challenged by the well-organised, upsurgent and self-empowering masses of Afrikan people and their allied progressive forces throughout the world.”

Kofi Mawuli Klu ‘Charting an Afrikan Self-Determined Path of Legal Struggle for Reparations’, a draft paper presented to the 11th December 1993 Birmingham Working Conference of the African Reparations Movement, UK, (1993)